No need to be snarky, we're just helping. Technomancers have massive MAD, while hackers need almost *nothing*, not even Logic. You asked why it's hard for Technomancers, and those are the answers. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Off the cuff, a rating 4 hacker 'module' is like 10-15BP, depending. Theoretical max starting hacker (with Restricted Gear's and stuff) is still much less than a 'well-rounded' Technomancer. It's nothing personal.

On the flipside, TMs have Sprites.

They can definitely do some cool things. I guess if you made a 'summoner' Technomancer, you could avoid some of the MAD, but you're still having the issues with Essence loss to augmentation, BP/karma dependence for programs, and so on. They're just very resource-intensive. Is it unfair? Possibly, and you could change things with house rules if your group preferred.

Even if you just look at things through the prism of complex forms vs. hacking programs the sheer expense of being a TM quickly becomes apparent. It's literally 5 times more expensive to purchase a rating 5 Complex Form of any stripe at character generation than it is to purchase a rating 5 Hacking Program. 10 times more expensive if we're talking about Common Use programs. And as other posters have pointed out, MAD is always a problem for TMs, and it rears its head even if you're just looking to attain a decent collection of Complex Forms and are otherwise disregarding your Living Persona attributes.

That's because the rating of forms is limited by your Resonance Attribute and the total number of forms you can have at character generation is limited to your Logic x 2 whereas Hackers are limited only by the 50 Gear BP cap and Availability. That's not an inconsiderable disadvantage given that acquiring new high rated forms only gets more expensive after character generation, since the Karma cost of improving a CF gets steeper the higher up the ladder you climb. Meanwhile, you can make a decent argument that Hacking programs are in many ways cheaper in play since you no longer need the Restricted Gear quality to sport customized rating 6 programs nor do you even necessarily have to pay for them at all if you have the dice pools to patch, pirate or code your own software. So yeah, Immersion is a huge boon for technomancers, but that's in large part due to the fact that it's relatively cheap compared to their other unique progression options.

The release of Rating 10 Programs in War! hasn't helped the TM/Hacker resource divide any.

Honestly? I've never really liked that Attributes don't have an impact on Hacking (and Rigging, really). It breaks from the Attribute + Skill paradigm the rest of the game has. If it were up to me I'd have made it Attribute + Skill like everything else. Programs would instead add bonus dice, and like most other bonus dice sources only come in ratings of 1 to 3, with 1 being common, 2 the gear of serious hackers, and 3 being nova-hot bleeding edge 'ware - with prices and availability to match.

But then I'd have to re-write a lot of other related sections of the book to fit the new paradigm, and I'm too lazy for that.




-k

And worse, it encourages Script Kiddies!

Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention in favor of Hackers, although it is indirect: Edge. Due to the opportunity costs inherent in being a TM, Hackers have a much easier time soft-maxing Matrix skills while still having the points to spend on a big ol' honking Edge pool. Between Codeslinger, specializations, encephalon 2, the hotsim bonus and 6 Edge I've seen a 10 karma hacker routinely nab admin access on rating 5 nodes in a couple of Complex Actions when doing On The Fly hacks. Between his simsense booster and the Mute program option delaying any automatic alert by a full combat turn, he could nab paydata and ruin a spider's day faster then you can say 'all your base are belong to us' that way. Such examples are why people tend to say that Hackers are often good enough even if TMs are capable of jacking up their Stealth programs to absurd levels.

What does "the tin" say? I only found a small reference to it in the beginning of 'War!' and I don't see anything on the official upcoming releases. Is there anything else identifying what this book might be?

So far, the "Tin" says "MilSpecTech", so I'm hoping that means Military Specified Technology, and not, you know, "Here's the crappy cars you'll find in Bogota that we welded Vietnam 'Police Action'-Era guns to."

The official forums upcoming realeases topic has this to say about this pdf supplement "MilSpecTech--We couldn't possibly fit all the cool military gear that's available into War! So more of it is in here!"
But apparently that is in error(not that any one listened my statement that it should then be changed) when it says couldn't fit in to WAR, as the content is produced independently from WAR.

You know, I'd have been happier with a vague statement of the various brushfire wars in the world, rather than one brushfire war in a city with NO MAP (In a cave, WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!), and then the rest of the gear rather than a PDF stand-alone.

But, hey, that's just me. You know, a customer. The target audience. (Well, one of the target audience.).

I'm going to wait and see if MilSpecTech is what it says it is. If it's gear like it says it is, hey, I'll buy it. If not, then it'll get a pass like War! did.

Haha, and what if it's War!-quality gear?

I haven't seen the gear from War!, so I can't comment on that.

I just want my damned MPUV back! Bastard child of a VW Beetle and a WWII Jeep!

Well, you can read the discussion threads floating around to get the idea of its unbelievable quality.

Wasn't MPUV supposed to be a reference to Humvee?

Most of it's pretty good, some nice additions to the game in there.
Especially the actually functional fighter jets.

You're right, they're excellently thought out. The lack of ECCM is just a brilliant feature.
But, to be honest, of all the Aircraft chapter I liked Vogelhund the most.

Well atleast they have places for more then 1 weapon, unlike the joke in the arsenal.

How many chances does CGL deserve? Really, they had their chances. They had a transistion, fine. They had a couple bumpf products. JAson promised things would be ebtter. Then he produced war, a turd of a book that not only is nothing more but a couple half-baked notes and drafts cobbled together into a badly layouted pdf, it also contains some really vile stuff that makes me really wonder whether David Hill wanted to be dark and edgy or whether this speaks for deeper beliefs.

MilSpec stuff seems to follow the same road as War! did, with being pushed out hush-hush to be opublished, to make some money to subsidize a badly dselling tabletop about giant robots whose RPG side never interested a viable audience to begin with. Unless people change at CGL, or maybe even publishers change, I do not believe things will change there as fundamentally as they need to.

Just a small comment on the side debate: Any technomancer can be good at social stuff, all they need is a thraded social aid program such as those in the emotitoy. Or, buy an semotitoy and have it be enhanced by a machine spirit. Similarily, a technomancer can just put a link into his gun and put a machine sprite in, wham, he gets the same boni (about) a sam gets on shooting. It'S insane. And TMs don't even need high CF. All they need is a maxed fade resist attribute. because threading is not an action and can be done anytime, as a response, to boos the pool.. That seriously cuts down on their cost, and frees them up to be as versatile as a ghacker, being just as good without sprites and much better with sprites.

I say give them one more major suppliment. 6WA had it's faults, but it was a decent job at trying to do a damned hard job.

War!, no, that was just drek in a box from what I'm gathering. Certainly isn't what it was supposed to be.

After that, they'd have to work damned hard to get my money again, and I'll just go to fan-made material. Again, however, that's just me.

That said, the lack of Errata is REALLY telling, indeed.

I'm going to mention a few things just to try and nip the "ZOMG, War! was bad so now everything, ever, will also be bad!" hyperbole in the bud, if I can. My insane spring semester's started up so I haven't had time to try and keep up with posts here on DS lately, but I've got a minute and I want to try and clear a few things up if I can.

While -- like War! -- I wasn't involved in working on MilSpecTech, I've seen it. I'll admit I didn't give it a terribly in-depth readover, scouring it for typos or anything, but I read over it and liked what I saw. The format, in particular, was a new twist on an old favorite of mine. Because it's dealing with, well, nothing but milspec gear, it may or may not be a "must have" book for every campaign out there, but in terms of layout and general content, it's a fun book. Lots of folks have been denouncing War! for not being Fields of Fire II, and given how awesome Fields of Fire was, I can understand the sentiment. That said, if you liked the gear sections of Fields of Fire back in the day, I think you'll like MilSpecTech a whole lot more than you (the generic "you") seem to be liking War!.

MilSpecTech aside, I also want to reiterate that some things are changing at CGL right now, in direct response to some feedback (to put it gently) we've received about War!. Typos and layout errors are at the top of our concerns lists, and steps have been taken to put more eyes on every draft. Quite literally the day that the first War! threads were being made and complaints about that sort of thing were rolling in, every chapter of our next major product was posted for more people to be able to read over, edit, comment on, and coordinate with each other with.

Trust me. No one wants the finished product to look good more than the guys who are writing it (especially those of us doing so for the first time, after being fans and players and GMs since SR1). All of us who're gonna have our name inside upcoming products are doing everything we can to make sure it's something we want to have our name on. Complaints are being heard, and we're doing what we can to address the issues that have been raised.

Please, please, PLEASE! I can't be the only person who is sick of this.

Then "Please, please, PLEASE!" buy me a copy so that I won't have to. As, from as I've been informed from a variety of sources (Admittedly, on the Internet, and, even worse, Dumpshock! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) ), it's not worth my money. Which is tight enough as is.

Critias, thank you for your statement. So far, it's looking like I'll be getting MilSpecTech so I don't cause the complaint that PoliteMan has (Rightfully, I'll admit) given. It's bad form to complain about things you haven't read/seen yourself, and I should be ashamed.

Should be, but am not. I'm an arrogant Ontarian after all. Bloody Easterner. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

What about Errata (for older product, I admit errata for war! will be difficult to have ready that fast)? What about a revision to the That Old Drone pdf so it starts to make sense? Sorry, but this is not the first time we've read that this will be the last bad book, and every successive product has been worse. Please accept this is going to be take with more than a grain of salt until MilSpec Gear is out (and it better deliver).

Also, given what was delivered by the hirelings writing War!, it is incredibly hard to believe they have been fans at all at any point in time, much less from 1st Edition. That's not to say nobody writing for SR is (I know a numer still working for CGL are), but it'S really hard to believe a fan would deliver fuckups like the Hot Spots section in War!, which, aside from completly fucking canon over in every way possible, also contains things that are just disgusting.

As for my expectations:
- Redundancies and rules that do not work with War!'s at all
- Gear, Gear, Gear. Some may actually be useful, some not
- The broken, broken Ultra-Damage vehicle rules will see more use
- uber equipment so that it becomes a must-have
- possibly an attempt at a new presentation of gear, and artwork and comments for every item, as has been strongly hinted. That may even be good, or at least better than in previous books.
- slightly less spelling and grammar error, still wonky editing, and a general detachedness from canon, as has been the feel of CGL books ever since Hardy.

I'll be waiting for reviews of MilSpec Gear. I will not buy it when out, as I made the mistake with War!. I don't expect much good there, though making a book better than War! is easy (all you need it to mind the Word Autocorrect function).

Dudes, this thread is not about Hackers vs. TMs and not about how CGL fucked up their last releases - we have a ton of threads for those topics.

Well, at least the Cover Image fits.